When the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center was being planned, the city showed a great deal of thought as to its location and design. But there was one idea that never really made sense to anyone other than a few city hall insiders and a handful of citizens but nevertheless seemed to be very hard to ignore.
The Spire. Originally, this was to be a “wayfinding” device: a tall, distinctively shaped object that would clearly mark the location of the convention center from many blocks away for visitors to the city.
Staff presentations often mentioned how Portland has a distinctive “wayfinder” at the entrance of its convention center. Downtown Portland is also far more densely developed than downtown Tacoma. And the Portland center was built in the era before ubiquitous GPS navigation systems in cars and phones that make wayfinding devices less important.
Tacoma’s pyramid-shaped Spire would be just under 400 feet tall and stand at the Commerce Street entrance to the building. It was estimated to cost $7 million. Over time it grew to over 400 feet, acquired a reflecting pool, and a price tag of $14 million.
When it first appeared on drawings of the proposed center design, city councilmembers wondered aloud what it was. It quickly gathered more attention than any other single aspect of the design.
One councilmember summed up the initial conversation about the Spire as “it just doesn’t do anything.”
Rather than take that comment to mean they should scrap this idea because it offers no benefit, city staff drew the opposite conclusion: "The council wants the Spire to do something.”
So, they made it taller and added an elevator. A revised proposal was presented to the city council several months later. The location was the same but the Spire was now taller and wider so it could accommodate an elevator that visitors could take to the top in order to see the view of a small part of downtown. The tower would also support cell tower antennae to improve wireless communications downtown. Staff still hadn’t identified where all of the funding would come from but expected elevator ticket sales to cover some of the cost.
The council overall was still underwhelmed, but there were supporters. The discussions were covered by the Tacoma News Tribune but also by the Seattle Times and P-I and the area’s television newscasts. Even the New York Times covered the community discussion about the Spire, throwing in several gratuitous references to unattractive aspects of the city’s past (“hometown of Ted Bundy”) for good measure. Discussion of the Spire sputtered along into 2003 even as construction of the convention center was well along.
The Spire had a brief revival in 2004 when a local businessman proposed adding a reflecting pond and a “peace wall” with handprints of children from around the world. The Spire would be named the “Tower of Peace”. The $14 million price tag would now be privately funded, but with the City donating the land and operating and maintenance costs. Again, while some members of the City Council were interested, there was no enthusiasm for continuing the discussion. The convention center itself was nearing completion by this time.
A model of the taller second version of the Spire was made and is now in the possession of the Tacoma Historical Society.
Long after the convention center opened, there was a story told within city hall that the Spire was never a real idea but was conceived because city staff knew the city council would focus on it and not the fact that staff was also proposing to significantly enlarge the proposed size of the convention center.
That story made no sense because the council certainly did notice the increase in size and was supportive, wanting to make sure the new convention center would meet the community’s need for many years before any expansion would need to be considered.
The Spire never made much sense at all, in either its original or extra tall sizes.